Thursday, ThinkProgress reported that the Ohio House had approved the most restrictive voter id law in the nation — a bill that would exclude 890,000 Ohioans from voting. Earlier this week Texas lawmakers passed a similar bill, and voter id legislation — which would make it significantly more difficult for seniors, students and minorities to vote — is now under consideration in more than 22 states across the country

Conservatives have said voter id laws are necessary to combat mass voter fraud. Yet according to the Brennan Center for Justice, Americans are more likely to be killed by a bolt of lightning than commit voter fraud. And the Bush administration’s five-year national “war on voter fraud” resulted in only 86 convictions of illegal voting out of more than 196 million votes cast. Instead conservatives are employing an old tactic: using the specter of false voting to restrict the voting rights of minorities and the poor.

Below, ThinkProgress examines the history of conservatives anti-voter agenda:

– JIM CROW SOUTH: In the Jim Crow South, historian Leon Litwack writes, “respectable” Southern whites justified their support for measures to disenfranchise African-Americans “as a way to reform and purify the electoral process, to root out fraud and bribery.” In North Carolina for example, conservatives insisted that literacy tests and poll taxes — which disenfranchised tens of thousands of African-Americans — were necessary to prevent “voter fraud.”

– 1981 RNC VOTER CAGING SCANDAL: According to Project Vote, in 1981 the Republican National Committee mailed non-forwardable postcards to majority Hispanic and African-American districts in New Jersey in an effort to accuse those voters of false voting. The 45,000 returned cards were then used to create a list of voters whose residency the GOP could challenge at the polls. The Democratic National Committee sued, winning a consent decree in which the RNC agreed not to engage in practices “where the purpose or significant effect of such activities is to deter qualified voters from voting.” Similar initiatives were undertaken by the Arizona GOP in 1958, the RNC in 1962 and again, despite the decree, in Louisiana in 1986.

–RECENT VOTER CAGING EFFORTS: During the 2004 election GOP state parties, along with dozens of unidentified groups, launched similar “voter caging” efforts designed to challenge the eligibility of thousands of minority voters by accusing them of voter fraud. And in 2008, the Obama campaign sued the Michigan Republican Committee for collecting a list of foreclosures in an effort to challenge the residency, and eligibility, of voters who had lost their home in the housing crisis.

– US ATTORNEY DAVID IGLESIAS FIRING SCANDAL: In an unprecedented politicization of the Justice Department, in 2006 the Bush White House fired US Attorney David Iglesias for refusing to prosecute voting fraud cases where little evidence existed. The New Mexico political establishment asked for Iglesias’ dismissal after he refused to cooperate with the party’s efforts to make voter id laws “the single greatest wedge issue ever.”

– US ATTORNEY TOM HEFFELFINGER DISMISSAL: In Minnesota, US Attorney Tom Heffelfinger lost his position when he ran afoul of GOP activists for “expressing deep concern about the effect of a state directive that could have the effect of discouraging Indians in Minnesota from casting ballots.”

– WISCONSIN, THE KOCHS AND THE 2010 ELECTION: Last fall ThinkProgress reported that a coalition of Wisconsin Tea Party and Koch-funded groups, in an effort to stop “voter fraud” and prevent “stolen elections,” was planning a sophisticated voter caging effort that would use GOP lawyers and Tea Party volunteers to challenge the eligibility of voters at polls in the state. Earlier that year, the same groups were instrumental in defeating a voter protection law that would have criminalized any attempt to use force or coercion to “compel any person to refrain from voting.” One prominent Tea Party member behind the voter caging effort that “since the voter law did not get passed this year… we can still do this.”

As statehouses across the country move forward on voter identification bills, ThinkProgress will continue to track conservatives latest efforts to advance their century-old anti-voter agenda.

– Kevin Donohoe

Our guest blogger is Erica Sagrans, a US-based freelance writer who has spent the last six weeks in the UK. You can follow her for more London protest updates on Twitter at @EricaS.

Fueled by anger at drastic government cuts, 500,000 protesters took to the streets of London yesterday in the largest protest since the city’s 2003 march against the Iraq war.

Few parts of British life will remain untouched by the massive $130 billion in cuts to public services now being rolled out by the coalition government. Local budgets are being slashed by up to 30 percent, leading to cuts in child care, public safety, programs for retirees, and library closures — and an increasing privatization of the popular, publicly-funded National Health Services.

“Women, parents, carers, disabled people, teenagers and elderly people” are likely to be hardest hit, reported the Guardian in a study of the cuts’ devastating impact. On top of services, the job losses are expected to be enormous. Amidst the UK’s current record 17-year unemployment high, the cuts will mean a loss of 490,000 public sector jobs.

The crowd at yesterday’s protest — the major march organized by the Trades Union Congress — was as diverse as the cuts people came out to rally against. On the streets, I stood next to firefighters wearing ‘Cuts cost lives’ shirts, a ‘book block’ of 20-somethings wielding large pink cardboard books as shields, kids on parents’ shoulders, and loads of homemade signs: ‘Give me back my future,’ ‘Stop teabagging the public sector,’ and ‘Hands off — the NHS is ours’ were just a few.

UK Uncut, the distributed effort that calls attention to corporate tax avoidance by taking over stores, used the march as a jumping off point for occupations throughout London’s major shopping areas. The spin-off group US Uncut also spent the day targeting more than 40 Bank of America branches across the United States.

UK Uncut peacefully took over London’s upscale Fortnum and Mason department store, whose owners they say have dodged more than 40 million pounds in taxes. Others climbed onto the store’s second-story roof, where they strung up tape saying ‘Closed by UK Uncut’ and sprinkled glitter on the crowd. Later in the evening protesters danced in Trafalgar Square when they were surrounded by riot police, who prevented them from leaving by using the harsh ‘kettling’ technique that was introduced during this winter’s UK student protests.

While the line that played out in the media focused on a small minority of protesters throwing paint and smashing windows, the vast majority were parents, students, health care workers, and union members there to voice their anger about the cuts. The real power of the day came from its dual nature: both the smaller groups ready to take more direct action combined with the strength in the numbers and stories of ordinary people standing up to say ‘no more.’ Their half-a-million strong presence in London’s streets yesterday gave rise to the feeling amongst many that this is just the beginning of something much larger.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has yet to come up with a plausible explanation for his brazen flip-flop from attacking President Obama for not intervening in Libya to attacking Obama for intervening in Libya the minute military action began. Indeed, on Fox News Sunday this morning, Gingrich offered an especially strange defense of his rapidly shifting positions — pointing out that his original support for military action was itself a flip-flop:

CHRIS WALLACE: You are taking some heat for what a lot of people are calling is a flip on what the U.S. should do in Libya. . . . Some are saying that whatever the President does or doesn’t do, you’re against.

GINGRICH: Well, you should have played an earlier clip when I was on Greta’s show in late February and I said we should be for replacing Gaddafi without using the U.S. military. Now, the President on March 3 changed the rules of the game. the President came out publicly and said Gaddafi must go. and so I was citing there my original position which is if you are not in the lake, don’t jump in. once you’re in the lake, swim like crazy.

Watch it:

Gingrich is indeed correct that, in a February 24 interview with Greta Van Susteren, he took an entirely unique position on Libya which in no way resembles his later pronouncements. Gingrich’s February position was that, if the United States merely stated that we will “actively support any effort to replace Gadhafi,” then the “Libyan military would rapidly decide to replace Gadhafi.”

In today’s Fox interview, Gingrich actually took yet another position on Libya. Gingrich’s position as of this morning is that “now that the President has said Gadhafi must go, our goal should be the defeat of the Gadhafi government and the replacement of Gadhafi as rapidly as possible. Ideally by using Western air power with Arab forces . . . to help with the ground campaign.”

To summarize, Gingrich has taken a variety of conflicting positions on Libya in just over a month:

• February 22: Gingrich blasts Obama for being “quiet” on Libya, says administration “ought to be firmly on the side of the Libyan people in replacing this administration.”
• February 24: Gingrich again attacks Obama for being “strangely quiet” about Libya, claiming that if Obama is more vocal on Libya, its military will bring about regime change on its own.
• March 7: Gingrich criticizes Obama for not using military force in Libya, says that the United States should unilaterally “exercise a no-fly zone this evening.” Gingrich says ground forces are unnecessary.
• March 23: Shortly after Obama exercises a no-fly zone in Libya, Gingrich criticizes the President for doing so. Gingrich says, “I would not have intervened.”
• March 23: On Facebook, Gingrich criticizes Obama for being vocal about his desire to replace Gadhafi on March 3. Say he now supports the no-fly zone because of Obama’s March 3 statement.
• March 27: Gingrich supports the use of air power in Libya, “ideally” in conjunction with Arab ground forces.